On a Saturday morning, the steel doors of the left-side elevator in the lobby of the Seward Park Cooperative slide open. A visitor steps in, headed for the 12th floor. But a voice calls after him.

''Don't go in there,'' a resident says. ''That's the Sabbath elevator. It stops on all floors.''

Six years ago, when workers renovated the elevators in the Cooperative Village Housing Corporation, which includes Seward Park, on East Broadway, they installed a new feature in one of the two elevators in every wing. The purpose was to accommodate strict adherents to the Jewish Sabbath. Based on the Talmudic law barring Jews from starting fires on the Sabbath, they are not permitted to operate electrical devices from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.

The ban includes pushing elevator buttons. And so, barring emergencies, at certain hours on Fridays and Saturdays, half the elevators of these 20-story buildings automatically open at every floor.

''It's a good idea,'' said Betsy Jacobson, a lifelong Seward Park resident. ''It's not much of an imposition on us who aren't observant, and it helps those who are.'' She said the average extra waiting time is about 20 seconds.

Others are not so sure. Pearl Greenberg, a 40-year Seward Park resident who said she had written a letter to management protesting the elevators, agreed that the issue was not critical. But, she said, ''This is a huge building, the majority of the people don't need it, and we feel it's going beyond the call of duty.''

Israel Keller, Seward Park's board president, estimated that 50 to 70 percent of residents were Jewish, with the Orthodox population at 15 to 20 percent. But supporters of the Sabbath elevators say they exist not so much to accommodate a religious group as to help an aging population.

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Many of the Orthodox don't use the elevators at all. ''Healthy people are really supposed to walk,'' said an Orthodox resident who declined to give her name. For frailer inhabitants, Mr. Keller said, the elevators are ''a leniency.''

Harold Jacob, general manager of the 4,200-unit Cooperative Village, said, ''Are we going to tell people in their 80's, 'No, you can't go to synagogue, you can't go to the park, you can't eat Sabbath dinner with your child?' '' Mr. Jacob said only a few residents had complained about the elevator.

Mr. Keller said the elevator debate reflected the dual demographics of the co-ops' Jewish residents. Built in 1960, the co-ops were originally sponsored by a garment workers' union. Mr. Keller said those who moved in from the largely Jewish neighborhood tended to be either secular, socialist ''old-line union people,'' or Orthodox Jews who belonged to local synagogues.

Often, he said, ''You find that the secular people are vehemently anti any accommodation.'' TARA BAHRAMPOUR

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A version of this article appears in print on February 13, 2000, on Page 14014009 of the National edition with the headline: NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: LOWER EAST SIDE; Sabbath Elevator: 'Leniency' or Nuisance?. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe